Of the Wolf, Ram and Hart
by Jedi Buttercup
Summary: The Wolf, Ram and Hart were a fairy tale. Story made up to frighten children. Or so Mal had always thought.
1. Of the Wolf, Ram and Hart

**Title**: Of the Wolf, Ram and Hart

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Rating**: T

**Summary**: Firefly/A:tS. _Mal woke up slowly, blinking as he recognized the familiar ceiling of **Serenity**'s med bay floating above him_. 1150 words.

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not. I claim nothing but the plot.

**Spoilers**: Firefly; "Serenity" (2005); the last seasons of Buffy & Angel.

**Notes**: Challenge fic. Another riff on the re-use of Firefly actors as evil characters in the Buffyverse.

* * *

Mal woke up slowly, blinking as he recognized the familiar ceiling of _Serenity_'s med bay floating above him. He'd seen that sight too many times to mistake it for anything else- that, and he could feel the hum of his lady's engines in the marrow of his bones. He'd missed that sorely over the last several days, at least as much as he'd missed his crew and the Black spreading wide and free all around him.

"How?" he muttered hoarsely, stirring slightly on the bed, then winced as sliced skin and broken bones pulled against new stitches and bandaging.

"Cap'n?" Kaylee's voice, full of worry and painfully welcome, piped up at his side. She leaned over the bed, laying a warm hand on a patch of unmarred, uncovered skin on his right arm, and stared down at him, searching his face with her eyes. "You're awake. How're you feelin'?"

"How you think I'm feelin'?" he rasped, then made a face and tried to swallow. His throat was dry as a desert, dry enough to tell him it had been longer than he thought since the last time Niska's torturer had allowed him anything to drink. He had no idea how long it had taken the crew to fetch him after he'd passed out that last time, or how long he'd been lying here waiting to wake up since.

Kaylee made a sympathetic face and reached out of his field of vision, then brought her hand back clasped around a large cup of something wet with a straw sticking out of it. He made a face but drank from it gratefully.

"That's it, Cap'n," Kaylee encouraged him as he sipped. "You'll be up and around again in no time."

When he felt equal to talking again, he let the straw slip from his mouth and tried his question again. "How'd you find me?" he asked. "Thought for sure when I saw Jayne there it meant he'd done somethin' to the ship to keep y'all from following."

Kaylee's cheer dimmed a little at that. "That weren't Jayne," she said, shaking her head.

"The Hell it wasn't," Mal said, surprised at her reply. He struggled a little, trying to sit up despite the pain that throbbed in his ribs, then winced and settled again. He could still picture the mercenary's smirking face hovering over him as he made new, interesting patterns on Mal's skin with his knife. "_I gotta tell ya_," he'd said, "_I'm a little disappointed. Didn't think a big, scary Independent war vet like you bled this easy_."

Mal hadn't known Jayne had that kind of- creativity- in him, and it had sickened him to know he'd let a man as could do that sort of thing live in close proximity with so many people he cared about for so long without nary a clue. He'd seen Jayne hungry for battle, but never thirsty for pain; the man had even said, once upon a job gone wrong, that men as lusted after the thrill of killing were as good as Reavers. If Mal hadn't known better, he would have thought his torturer an evil twin instead- but Jayne only had one sibling, a younger sister who took ill at the drop of a hat and scrawled barely-literate messages that her brother was always loudly delighted to receive.

"It _weren't_," Kaylee repeated again, sounding distressed. "It weren't him, Captain. I know what it musta looked like, but Jayne was here with us the whole time."

Mal gaped incredulously at her, unable to reconcile what she was telling him with what his own eyes had seen. "You tellin' me there's two men in the 'verse looks that identical, and they ain't twins? I ain't buyin' it, Kaylee. I don't know what he's told you, what kinda sneakin' around he did to keep y'all from figurin' out what was going on-"

"Told us, nothing," Kaylee frowned. "I done seen 'em with my own two eyes, and you can too; we got him locked up down to the cargo bay. Zoë thought you might like to see him 'fore we flushed him out the airlock, just so you could be sure."

"You-" Mal swallowed. "You captured that _tama de hundan?_"

"Killed him, sir," Zoë said, face grim and hard as she slid the doors of the med bay open and stepped into the small space. "Shot and staked, not that it'll slow him for long. You feelin' up to payin' him a visit?"

Mal shifted a little on the bed, assessing the state of his injuries, and grimaced as his nerve endings reported in. Now he'd had a little water and some time to clear his head, he still felt like he'd woke up after being on the wrong end of a stampede, but workable. He wouldn't be moving at a very good clip, but with an arm or two as support, he'd do just fine. If it were necessary.

"Some reason I ought to be in a hurry on this one, Zoë? Somethin' about this guy I don't know about?"

Her nostrils flared, and her expression grew even grimmer, which he hadn't known to be possible. "Took eight shots to bring him down, sir, all of them center mass. And he has a tattoo, middle of his back. He's of the Wolf, Ram and Hart."

Mal took a deep breath at that, then flinched and closed his eyes as the pain subsided. "That's a fairy tale, Zoë. Story made up to frighten children."

"So were Reavers, sir," Zoë said flatly, staring him down as he opened his eyes again. "River's skittish of him, too; girl keeps talkin' about fangs and armies of evil lawyers, or some such."

Mal swallowed. Immortal, evil assassins who worked for some kinda hidden authority? Sounded like _feihua_- but then, he'd seen the men tasked after River. Two by two, hands of blue. Was Zoë's suggestion really that far-fetched by comparison with all else he'd seen the last two years? Who knew what other kind of experiments had been done on people?

"If he's one of _them_, then what'd he want me for?" Mal asked "Man kept calling me Caleb, but I know it weren't mistaken identity; he knew all about my war record, and our part in the Miranda broadwave. Kept tauntin' me about helpin' the girl, 'stead of killin' her."

"Couldn't say, sir." Zoë shook her head as she said it, but something in the lines around her eyes said different; she'd rarely lied to Mal in all their years working together, but he'd caught her out every time. And she knew it. If she were lying to him now, it had to be for Kaylee's sake, or anyone else listening- which meant he'd have to pry it out of her in private later.

"Huh," he said. "Well, then. Gimme a hand up, why don't you?"

-x-


	2. Time to Stop Falling

**Title**: Time to Stop Falling

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Rating**: T

**Summary**: Firefly/AtS. _It unsettled Mal a little, the idea that there had been folk doing to others what had been done to River- or near enough- even so many years ago_. 2100 words.

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not. I claim nothing but the plot.

**Spoilers**: Firefly; "Serenity" (2005); the last seasons of Buffy & Angel.

**Notes**: Challenge fic. Set in the same 'verse as "Of the Wolf, Ram and Hart".

* * *

"So, what's the verdict, Doc?" Malcolm Reynolds said, looking down at the coffin-shaped crate his crew had brought over from the derelict starship.

Simon Tam, fugitive, annoying pain in his ass, and highly trained core doctor, looked up from the little glowing panel on the side of the crate and shook his head in bemusement. "I have no idea how this man is even still alive," he said. "For whatever value of alive might apply. This technology is _centuries_ old; at least twice as old as the ship out there."

"A ship which represents an intriguing anomaly in its own right," Inara said, leaning against the cargo bay railing next to Mal. She was dressed finely as always, as befit her status as a highly trained and educated Companion; but she'd used a light hand on the makeup brush that day, and she went barefoot, as had been more common for her since the dustup at Miranda. Mal leaned a mite closer to her as they played spectator, and relished the uncomplicated warmth of her against his arm.

"Kaylee says that according to its registry, its last port of call was on Earth, under a company name listed only as W&H, but none of the parts are anywhere near as old as they should be if it were part of the colonial exodus," Inara continued. A delicate frown marred the fine skin of her brow.

"Someone, somewhere, really wanted this man saved," Simon sighed. Then he stood, brushing dirt from the knees of his trousers, and turned to look up at Mal. "Unfortunately, he was very severely wounded before he was put into stasis; the abdominal perforation on its own would have been a challenge to the medical profession of his day, but there are indications that he was mauled by some sort of creature afterward, which infected him with a very aggressive pathogen that I have no frame of reference for. It would be folly to try to heal him without knowing more; but we may not have a choice, given the deterioration in the chamber's systems. It could be weeks, days, or even hours before the circuitry fails; Kaylee would be able to pinpoint it more accurately, but it will definitely be soon. Likely before we can find a world with adequate medical facilities that will accept our custom."

Mal pursed his lips, considering the situation, and glanced up at the cargo bay doors that still stood open on their connecting passage with the derelict ship. Zoë and Kaylee were still exploring its dusty innards, looking for more useful bits and bobs that might've survived the passage of time and the long-ago attack that had left it drifting. "Seems to me we found him just in the nick of time, then."

"Seems to me our creepifyin' pilot might maybe have kenned he was there, and brought us out here to the ass end of nowhere on purpose," Jayne observed, coming down the hallway from the dining room. "Navigation error my ass." He took a spot on the railing on the other side of Mal, eyes fixed not on the crate but on the slight figure slumped against it, ear pressed against its side about where a man's heart should be.

"He's a fighter," River observed in a mournful tone of voice. "Name like a weapon. Fought like one too, noble and true even when he got confused." She smiled a little at that, then shifted, turning her face so she could look up at her brother. "Remembered too much. Some of it was made up, and there were too many secrets... but he found his way out and went down fighting, the way he'd always wanted."

Simon swallowed visibly at that; it was plain he understood from that speech what had drawn his Reader of a sister to their slumbering guest. Mal understood, too; and it unsettled him a little, the idea that there had been folk doing to others what had been done to River- or near enough- even so many years ago. He knew better than most how dark the seamy underbelly of Humanity could get, but like most Rim-world children raised on stories of Earth-That-Was, he still cherished the idea of their long-ago home as paradise lost: green and rich and covered in a multitude of separate nations, each with their own ideologies, cultures, and governments to bow to. No Alliance _lese_ gathering all the worlds under one banner, whether they will or no.

"Well, we'll do our best to see he lives to fight another day, little one," he said, nodding down to her. "Won't turn a man in need away."

* * *

He had cause to regret that promise a few days later. The stasis chamber had failed, just as Simon had said it would; and their guest had pulled through, just as River had wanted. They hadn't counted on him waking as ornery as a bear caught in a trap.

After hours of difficult surgery and the use of more of Simon's stolen core-world drugs than they could really afford to spare, their guest had finally slipped into a healing sleep. Mal had left Jayne behind to guard him, while the rest of them went through the last of the records and antique goods brought off the _Angel_; fighter or no, it had seemed unlikely that a wounded man without a weapon on him would be any challenge to the mercenary's skill even if he should prove to be difficult. The first clue they'd had that anything was wrong had been a choked-off bellow of surprise, followed by the clanging of metal implements hitting the floor.

Mal was first down the stairs, with Zoë and River close behind him, and Simon on his sister's heels. He waved the others back as they came into range of the infirmary windows, easing his pistol out of its holster on his hip, and peered into the confined space; the normally orderly room was an unholy mess, tools and drugs strewn about every which-a-way, and Jayne backed into a corner by the shirtless patient. From the looks of his broad, bandaged chest, he'd torn a stitch or two in his waking, and the trembling of his visible muscles made it clear he'd run out of gas again soon- but he had Jayne bent backward with a knife to his throat, and if they didn't interrupt him, _soon_ might be too late.

"'Scuse me, is this a private party, or can anyone join in?" Mal said blandly, easing into the room gun-first. He'd be perfectly willing to put the pistol down to ease hostilities; but only if the other also lowered his knife, and in the meanwhile he _might_ be able to shoot faster than that blade could cut. Man liked to keep his options open in a situation like that.

Strangely, the man paled even further at the sight of him, going all ashy-grey in the face. "Caleb," he blurted, then glanced past Mal's shoulder and swallowed visibly. "Jasmine," he whispered, sounding pole-axed. "What kinda Hell did I wake up in? Ain't y'all supposed to haunt the heroes, not their sidekicks?"

Something in Mal froze at the name the man had given him, and he lowered the gun slowly, putting connections together in his mind. Inara'd said the _Angel_ sailed for a company name of W could that stand for the Wolf, Ram, and Hart? Nigh on a year ago he'd been captured and tortured by a man looked just like Jayne that couldn't be killed without you staked him in the heart first and scattered him across the black in a dozen separate pieces. He'd called Mal 'Caleb', too. And Zoë had been real skittish about the matter; she'd known something about him, something beyond the legends of immortal assassins that slipped round the edges of the 'verse, that she hadn't been willing to say. The whole mess added up to a very ugly sum; one he wasn't sure he wanted more details of.

At least River had taken to this one. She hadn't gone anywhere near Hamilton's corpse when they'd had it aboard, not even as close as the kitchen.

"Ain't no kind of Hell at all," he said calmly, gesturing to Zoë to lower her gun as well. "Not to those of us as call it home. And we ain't who you think we are, neither. If you're thinkin' that one there's called Hamilton, got to tell you, I completely understand the urge you're havin' to kill him; but we took care of that _tama de hundan_ last year. This here's Jayne Cobb, and he's a member of my crew. My name's Mal Reynolds. And my second here is Zoë Washburne."

"He ain't lyin'," Zoë said, quietly, at his side. "He ain't Caleb, and we've run afoul of the Wolf, Ram, and Hart before. Kinda curious that we found you on one of their ships, though."

The trapped panic in his eyes cleared a little at Zoë's calm insinuation, and he straightened a little, loosening his grip on Jayne's throat. "Don't know about any ship. Last thing I knew, Wolfram and Hart had sent an army to kill me and mine. Their kind of severance agreements are just a _little_ on the literal side, and your guy here looks _exactly_ like their hatchet man."

"No hatchets here," River said, pushing Zoë and then Mal gently out of her way and gliding into the room. "Just people, who want to be your friends."

Mal was tempted to grab hold of the girl and stop her, but she'd more than proven she knew her way around sharp edges, _feng-le_ or not. And she _had_ drawn them to him. Hopefully, she had a plan.

Their guest relaxed a little further, looking at her; she was wearing a long, flowing gown gone ragged at the hem, one of Inara's cast-offs, a size or two loose on her, with her hair all down and tangled. She looked younger than she was, and next best thing to harmless. "And who are you, little girl?" he asked.

"I'm River," she said calmly, halting a few arm-lengths away. His knife had pressed closer to Jayne's throat again as she approached, but he stopped again when she did. A slow bead of blood welled up, trickling down Jayne's throat; Jayne swallowed, but his eyes were still clear, and Mal could see one of his hands groping along the nearby counter for something of use.

"It's rude to ask my name and not offer yours, though," River chided him.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Gunn," he said, grudgingly. "They call me Gunn."

"Strong name for a strong man," River mused, tipping her head to the side. "You've been asleep five hundred years, Gunn."

"Five hundred- _what_?" he objected. The tremor in his muscles had increased, and he blinked as though the lights in the room were blinding him, but he still didn't let go his weapon.

"Say goodbye to everything you ever knew," she told him, in gentle tones. "Time to stop falling."

_That_ caught at Gunn's breath; and finally, finally he lowered the knife toward the floor. Jayne skittered away as soon as the blade left his throat, swinging around a bedpan he'd picked up to brain him with; River slid inside his reach just in time, catching the metal before it could impact. Then she turned to catch Gunn as his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped toward the floor.

Simon edged into the infirmary then, to help her ease his patient back onto the bed; and Jayne swore, grabbing up a piece of gauze and pressing it to his neck as he stormed out of the room.

Mal turned his eyes toward his second, thoughtful and quiet, as they backed out to let Simon work. "Notice you didn't tell the man _you_ weren't what he called you," he said, slowly.

A grim smile turned up one corner of her mouth. "No, no I didn't," she said. "And that still ain't a story I'm anywhere near ready to tell."

"You're still _my_ Zoë, though," he added for clarification's sake, raising his eyebrows at her.

Her expression softened a little, and she nodded. "Always was, sir."

He sighed. "Good. Then whenever you're ready to tell's soon enough. Meantime, though, I'd better go make sure navigation's set."

"I'll keep an eye out here," Zoë assured him.

And that was that. Mal shook his head as he tramped back up to the bridge, wondering what in the _tian xiode_ would happen next.

-x-


	3. Stripping Away the Thorns

**Title**: Stripping Away The Thorns

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Rating**: T

**Summary**: Firefly/Angel. _Zoë's ready to tell her story. But Mal's maybe not quite so ready to hear it._ 3500 words.

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not. I claim nothing but the plot.

**Spoilers**: Firefly; "Serenity" (2005); Angel 4.18, "Shiny Happy People".

**Notes**: 3rd in the "All Made Up" series. I've been pondering the concept of how Zoe could be Jasmine for years, and this is what she had to tell me. Translations at the bottom.

* * *

"You might say as how I've always been a rebel, Sir," Zoë said quietly, staring out the bridge windows into the starry night.

Mal started a little, feet dropping from the console he'd propped them on to clank against the deckplates. He and his first mate had been sharing the late watch together- an old habit, formed years before when they'd been sergeant and corporal in the War, took up again since they'd lost Wash to the Reavers. They hadn't actually rubbed two words together since they'd walked up after supper, no more than was needful for the setting of the course; the words had caught him a bit by surprise. The content, however, was no more than he would have expected.

"Really? I hadn't noticed," he murmured, tone as wry as his expression.

She shot a sharp, no nonsense look in his direction, having none of it. "_Always_," she repeated, slowly. "Long before I ever went by the name of Zoë Alleyne."

A frown knit Mal's brow; he'd known her more'n a decade, since he'd joined the Independents, and she'd been with the army several years before that. Since she was just a slip of a girl; and he'd never heard tell of her wearing another moniker, not until she'd wed their late lamented pilot.

Then again- their newest passenger _had_ called her 'Jasmine', first time he'd laid eyes on her. And _he_ was a man as hadn't drawn breath outside a cryocoffin in five hundred years, give or take a decade, according to the doctor.

"This about that name what River's new friend called you by this afternoon?" he asked.

Man had called Jayne by the name of Hamilton, too- untrue, but not surprising, as the latter'd tried to kill Mal once and he'd likewise been discombobulated by the resemblance. But Mr. Charles Gunn had referred to Mal as Caleb as well, a name that he'd never so much as used as an alias, nor heard tell of, and Zoë'd told the man straight out as weren't true. Solely on the strength of that, Mal would have assumed Gunn was imagining things, giving her that flowery name as didn't fit her, neither.

Apart from the fact that she hadn't denied it. _And_ she'd known an awful lot about the folk of the Wolf, Ram and Hart as hadn't even featured in Mal's Ma's fairy tales. He trusted Zoë Washburne. But he didn't know a damn thing about the woman whose likeness had sparked such terror in Gunn's eyes.

Zoë turned back to the windows, expression shuttered close by his question. "That wasn't my original name, either," she said, words dropping like anvils from her mouth.

Mal sucked in a breath, worrying that over, and reminded himself as how she'd stuck with him through some fair unpleasant revelations of his own. Only seemed right to extend her the same benefit he'd been so doubtful of deserving. "Ready to tell that story, then? Thought it would take a mite longer."

Her smile widened a little, though it was still sharp enough to cut. "No time like the present."

"Ain't that the truth," he snorted. Only way to live, ghosts like they all carried.

She stood up out of the co-pilot's seat then, stepping out into the aisle between consoles, and turned her face back to the Black. "You grew up hearing the stories, you said," she began, elliptically.

Mal frowned, watching her profile as she searched the stars for something he didn't yet comprehend. "Yeah. Bunch of fairy tale nonsense, or so I always thought: same stories mothers been tellin' their children for generations on the border planets, aimin' to keep 'em from doing things as they shouldn't."

"And how do you feel about them now?" she asked carefully, still avoiding his eyes.

He blew out a breath, measuring his words with care. "I wish I could say I still believed it was all a bunch of _fèihuà_," he admitted. "Scares me more than a bit to think there might be some truth in all them stories of scary monsters. But as you said- Reavers were stories once, too. And some of the things I saw during the war..." He trailed off, shuddering as memory overtook him. "More'n once it was I wrapped my hand around that cross in my bedroll, tellin' myself it was only imagination."

She reached up, crossing her arms and rubbing her hands over her biceps as if she'd taken a sudden chill. "Weren't," she said, curtly.

Mal closed his eyes, resting a hand over his breastbone where that necklace had lain all during his fighting years, for a moment cast back to the trenches. Waiting for relief that never showed, or catching glimpses of strange shapes moving on the fringes of battle. Scavengers, he'd told himself more'n once, given dreadful likeness by his edgy nerves; still and all, he supposed he hadn't been far wrong. A lot of blood had been spilled in that civil war as it raged over half of civilized space; not a surprise that predators had been drawn to its leavings. He just hadn't recognized which sort.

"Well now, that's going to do wonders for my nightmares," he commented dryly. "S'pose I'll take your word for it, though. 'Specially after what happened with that _húndàn_ Hamilton. And what we seen on that transpo we found Gunn on. Only ever heard tell of the like in those self-same stories: men what gave their souls away for power, and turned themselves into something inhuman. Always thought that was a metaphor, before."

Zoë nodded slowly, dark eyes troubled. "Funny thing is, it works the other way, too," she said.

Well now. Mal sat back a bit at that, tilting his head at her. "I'm thinkin' I might maybe need a few more details, there," he replied.

"You sure about that, sir?" She arched her brows at him, tone low and serious and undercut by a hollowness that seemed near as vast as the void outside.

No; he wasn't. But that wasn't what she needed to hear. "Asked if you were still my Zoë, earlier. You said you was. I believe you. But it seems you've a need to talk to _someone_ about this. And I may be no Wash, nor Shepherd Book- but I've always been your'n, too. I can't say as I don't feel a little left out you hadn't already told me."

She shook her head at that, expression grim. "Never told Wash. Never wanted to see the look on his face. He made me feel _joy_, and that was something I hadn't had in- I can't say how long. Didn't want to risk spoiling it. And as for the Shepherd..." She drew in a deep breath and let it out. "I'd be more like to tell Inara, if I had any use for confession. Leastwise I can be certain where _her_ loyalties lie."

Mal rubbed a hand over his mouth, stomach churning uneasily. "And me?"

Zoë smiled back, chill as midwinter on St. Albans. "Didn't think you'd understand either, before the Valley. Nor would want to." She lifted a hand in echo of his motion earlier, resting her fingers over the expanse of skin between the open collar of her shirt and her marriage necklace. "No one ever does, not until they've seen for themselves. Then I went off to the Dust Devils- and the week I found you again, there was Wash. I figured we both deserved the chance to leave our pasts behind us."

"But now?" He coaxed her to continue.

She shrugged. "Now? No point keeping it silent. You already know enough, might as well fill in the rest. And I think..." She eyed him, eyes tracing over his features, lingering on the cut of his hair, the hinge of his jaw, the shadowed hollows of his eyes in the dim light. "Call it hope."

Mal had not the least, tiniest idea what she meant by that, but he wasn't about to admit it and risk her clamming up again. "Details, then," he decided.

She nodded. "There's a story. You've heard the one about the Girl Who Shut the Mouth of Hell?"

He narrowed his eyes, thinking back to those childhood tales again. He'd heard _that_ one most often from sources other than his mother; but yeah, he knew it. "That's the one where the warrior priestess finds herself fighting an enemy too strong to destroy on her own? So she prays for help, and two folk come to her, offering her an answer. Those Who Watch, who promise to make _her_ stronger at the expense of her identity- and Those Who Wait, who present her a magic weapon any of her sisters could also pick up, should she fall."

The corner of Zoë's mouth curled up bleak amusement, and he took that as a sign that he was on the right track. "Will always said as how it was an allegory, meant to teach us to rely on one another, not take all the world on our own shoulders no matter the price. Though I'm guessin', from your bringing it up now, that's not so much the actual message."

The smile widened a little, nearly reaching her eyes. "No; not so much. Though even if it were- you should apologize to Will. Didn't exactly take the lesson to heart, did you?"

Mal winced, not meaning to bring the conversation to a halt- but he couldn't help but remember what had happened to Shadow, his mother, the forty hands who'd helped to raise him, and all their neighbors, when the Alliance troops set off the grass fires that razed their community to the ground. "Had reason," he managed, words clipped by old pain.

She sighed, expression going grim again as she turned back to the forward windows. "It's a rare being that can. I most certainly didn't."

"And?" He wondered at the phrasing.

"And, if you know the story, you remember the differences between Those Who Watch and Those Who Wait?" she prompted back.

Mal shrugged. "The one's a bunch of old men as served some kind of all-powerful scale-balancers, and t'other's a bunch of old women who wanted the best for the girls of their order. I was always taught _that_ part was, y'know, illustratin' the tension between the good of the community and the good of the individual." His mouth turned down at that: most of the folk as had taken up arms against the Alliance had paid the last full measure of their devotion expressing their opinion on _that_ subject.

Zoë gave him a wry look. "Careful, Cap'n, your education is showing," she drawled, breaking the tension. Then she shook her head, before he could come up with a suitably deflecting reply, and continued. "I suppose there was some of that to it. But mostly, it was a pissing match between some of those scale-balancers... not that they were all committed to balance, and not that they were all-powerful, you understand... and those as thought human beings should plow their own furrows, come what may."

He stared at her a long minute, opening his mouth to reply, then closing it again as he worked through the implications. "You talk like you was there," he finally settled on, watching her warily. "Those women, all the stories agree they was _old_, but..."

She snorted. "No, I wasn't one of Those Who Wait. Close, though. I was one of the Higher Beings they tried to defy. And they were right to do so."

Mal's jaw dropped. Whatever he'd been half-expecting to hear, it wasn't that. "_Cái bù shì_. When you say 'Higher Being'..."

Zoë's amusement ebbed again, and she let out a sigh, crossing her arms over her vest. "I know another story. One that starts like this..."

Her voice fell into the rising and falling, measured cadence of a storyteller as she continued. "In the beginning, before the time of man, great beings walked the earth. Untold power emanated from all quarters- the seeds of what would come to be known as good and evil. But the shadows stretched and became darkness, and the malevolent among us grew stronger. The earth became a demon realm. Those of us who had the will to resist left, but we remained ever-watchful."

He twitched at the half-reference to Those Who Watch, remembering what became of them in the Girl's story, and held his breath as she went on. Not wanting to believe. But not quite daring not to. It was _Zoë_ telling him the story- and he knew her better than he knew his own self. She was more remote than he'd ever seen her- even after Wash's death, or in the midst of the war- but nothing about her posture said she was telling him a lie.

"But then something new emerged from deep inside the earth- neither demon, nor God. Man. And it seemed, for a time, that through this new race a balance might be restored. But we failed them. We became little more than observers. And so many atrocities were done in our names- I could no longer bear to just watch all the suffering. I had to find a way back. But, first I needed a miracle. And so I arranged one. Took a lot of doing, though- and even with all my planning, I failed to account for some of the variables."

When the silence lengthened, Mal swallowed and cleared his throat. He'd spent most of his younger years a believing man, but he'd long since decided there was nobody up there watching the sparrows fall. It strained his credulity to hear _Zoë_ suggest otherwise. The idea she'd gone crazier than River somehow was looking more and more likely, little as he wanted to consider it.

"Variables?" he asked, warily.

"One in particular," she said, coming back to herself a little as she gave him another faint smile. "It was the soul tripped me up, in the end. At first, it didn't much matter to me if I were killing thousands to save billions; I was there to make the best of all possible worlds, without borders, hunger, or misery. And the only definition of love I believed in was sacrifice- the good of the many, as you said, at the expense of the one. I brought everyone to me, made them part of me; and for a time, it was glorious."

He couldn't repress his shudder at that. Sounded like she'd tried to be all of the Alliance in her own person. He just couldn't reconcile that with the woman he knew. "If you was really all that... then why ain't we all livin' in that utopia right now?" he had to ask.

"Because of folk like you," she said, simply. "Those as believed it was every human's right to choose. Who believed there were such things as absolute right and wrong. I arranged my birth into that world because none of the other Powers gave a solitary damn about it, and I wanted to save it. But I didn't understand the people I was trying to save; what they valued. What it really meant to be one of them. And when I was stopped..."

She trailed off, then shook her head and stared down at her booted feet, shoulders bowed as if by a heavy weight. "I discovered I'd outsmarted myself in more ways than one. Born of human parents- I had a human soul, too. And I faced the same justice meted out to many another human soul who'd been tainted by arcane power."

"And what might that be?" he asked softly. Starting to understand. He still remembered the look on the Operative's face when he'd discovered the cost of his 'better worlds'; he heard all too much of that in what Zoë was telling him.

"Why, to be reborn again and again until I _did_ understand," she said, bleakly. "Until the last of the taint is gone. Only having been what I was, I've never been able to forget my past, no matter how many lives I live. I was starting to think I might never reach an end- that I'd be doomed to watch humanity fail to find peace, over and over, while I fought to defend those I'd have devoured in the days of my divinity."

She let the silence hang for a moment, then tilted her head toward him. "I'd given up on ever being aught but alone in it before I saw you again."

"_Shén me_?" he blurted, his brain still stuttering over that casual mention of _divinity_.

Then the early part of the conversation caught back up with him, and he damn near choked on his own tongue. "_Caleb_," he hissed. "But you said..."

She quirked a knowing smile. "And so you aren't. Now. Won't say I wasn't reminded a time or two, though. The dark lieutenant in that story of the Girl? Man started out a powerful believer in the One and True, and when life played him false, he took up the service of another Power as didn't toe the party line. Decided all women were whores, to blame for all the evils of the world, and went on a crusade that took him to the Mouth of Hell as the mouthpiece of its patron."

Mal thought back to that old story, and made a few more sudden, alarming connections as he hadn't recognized at the time. _Crusade_ was an ugly word for his determined pursuit of the truth behind the Reavers, but he supposed it applied. And that weren't all. "You watched me like a hawk, that day I took off my cross. Thought were you afraid I'd do myself a harm, not..." He shook his head abruptly. "And you went over so cold when Saffron first came aboard, suspectin' the worst of me without cause." Not to mention some of the things he'd said to Inara, when they'd been fighting.

To believe, or not to believe? It seemed preposterous. But why should she tell such a farrago of lies?

"Not without cause- _if_ you were Caleb," she said, firmly. "But you're not. You're a good man, Malcolm Reynolds."

He spluttered with embarrassment, then got up from the pilot's seat, shaking his head. He still didn't pretend to fully believe what-all she'd said- _them_, figures out of legend- but he couldn't deny _her_, and he could read the defensive bracing of her posture as if it were written on her skin.

Well. He _was_ the man who'd dared face down River in that very room to tell her she was a person, actual and whole- and _aī yā_, if he didn't understand now what Hamilton had meant about saving girls instead of killing 'em- and he'd do no less for the sister of his heart. Or should he say soul- and didn't that concept set his gut all a-quiver?

_Believe in something_, Book had told him, laying bloody hands alongside his face. Well. Seemed that he'd found that belief, between River and Zoë. And he surely knew which one needed him more.

"And you think 'cause I don't remember it same as you do, that makes us any different?" he said quietly, reaching out and taking one of Zoë's hands in his. It was warm, slightly smaller than his paws but worn with all the same calluses; darker to the eye, mayhap, but only in superficials, not deep down where it mattered. He'd swear to it.

"Even if, let's say I believe you- and I'm not saying as I don't," he added as her expression tightened, "though you have to admit it's some mighty fantastical storytellin'- seems to me you've _made_ your choice. You're no more Jasmine than I am the Harbinger of the story. And you've always believed in _me_. So I'll have no more of this lookin' at me like I'm about to put you off _our_ boat."

He swallowed, taking her other hand, and looked back up into her face. "Was a thing I said two years ago: and I'll say it again now. We may've arrived in this life for different reasons, but we've come to the same place. And that's all that matters. No time like the present, remember?"

"I remember," she said, giving him a look still jagged round the edges with echoes of pain.

He cleared his throat and floundered for reassurance. "Don't make me repeat the first rule of flying."

She squeezed his hands back, as wordless as he.

Reincarnation. Higher beings. He still didn't quite know what to make of it- but he'd meant what he said, too. "You still with me, Zoë?" he pressed, needing to hear it.

She let go his hands, briefly pressing her fingers against the spot where the Operative's sword had pierced him through, and gave him a crooked smile. "_Dāng rán_."

Even if it _were_ all made up, _that_ was all that truly mattered in the end.

-x-

_fèihuà_ - "nonsense"  
_húndàn_ - "bastard"  
_Cái bù shì_ - "No way"  
_Shén me?_ - "I'm sorry?"  
_aī yā_ - "damn"  
_Dāng rán_ - "Of course"

-x-


	4. In Shattered Reflection

**Title**: In Shattered Reflection

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Rating**: PG-13/T

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not.

**Summary**: _For all that they looked the same, their insides were as different as oil and gunpowder, as the girl who'd dreamed of being a dancer and the kuángzhě de assassin who put on her face_. 1300 words.

**Spoilers**: Post-series for both Firefly and Angel

**Notes**: Challenge fic. Slots in before "Of the Wolf, Ram and Hart" in the "All Made Up" 'verse. Translations at the bottom.

* * *

River crouched over the unconscious form of the demon who'd stolen the Captain, staring intently into the too-familiar features. Time slipped, disjointed, like a capture with the time index randomly resliced as she blinked down at his slack, bruised face: an angry snarl dragging his mouth into an ugly line, the mirrored scowl worn by _Serenity_'s merc during their brief battle, the slippery, glutinous thoughts of the one set against the stubborn fire of the other. Watching them square off had unsettled her stomach as badly as Miranda: it had taken her a long, disbelieving moment to comprehend.

But for all that they looked the same, their insides were as different as oil and gunpowder, as the girl who'd dreamed of being a dancer and the _kuángzhě de_ assassin who put on her face. Hamilton was his name: an old name, fit for a man who'd once walked the Earth while she still _Was_. Decades and centuries layered like archaeological strata beneath his thoughts, populated by beasts with horns and fangs and golden eyes. And worse: _lawyers_, greedy grasping creatures like the ones who'd told _fùqīn_ and _mŭqīn_ how happy their daughter would be at the Academy. River shuddered and pulled back before they could catch sight of her, anchoring her mind's ears in Jayne's shallower, protective aggression instead.

The difference startled her all over again as she shifted her focus, and she backed away a step, flinching as her toes skimmed through a spreading puddle of murky blood. It tingled like a copper penny on the back of her tongue: the backwash of a reservoir of acrid power, spilling out over the cargo bay floor. By contrast, _Serenity_'s echo burned like a clear, warming flame behind her: a man of small-scale, faithful iniquities set against a vast and vicious malignance.

Lesser, Hamilton's makers might've said. But River knew they would be wrong. Jayne was in no danger, nor any danger to her. Not anymore. She wondered that it had taken her so long to tell the dreams apart.

"He looks better in red," she murmured, relabeling old nightmares in fascination.

"I don't know about _that_," Jayne growled over her shoulder, nose wrinkled in revulsion as he laid a hand on her shoulder, gently nudging her toward a seat several paces from the body. She sat, staring at him in fascination as he pulled a stained rag from his pocket, lifting her foot to blot the warm wetness away. "But I ain't arguin' with the fact that I'm a damn sight more comfortable with all them holes bein' in him instead of me. What d'you think, did I kill him dead enough this time? Wish we hadn't brought him back; don't know what Zoë was thinkin'."

He lowered her foot to the floor, pocketing the rag, then stepped away again and shoved at the body with one boot-clad foot. River watched it as it flopped ponderously over, wincing at the flare of pained awareness that followed. She could see a tattoo exposed at the small of Hamilton's back, a running wolf in company with a curly-horned ram and a leaping hart: and time lurched again, flipping back a snippet of his encounter with the Captain.

"_It's profits that let you keep this plucky little boatload of good above water_," she murmured, half in response to Jayne's query, half in sympathetic recognition at the way the demon had wielded words as well as blades in his pursuit of Mal's destruction.

Jayne turned to stare at her, a shudder working its way through his shoulders, then glared down at his double again, dropping a hand to his hip to caress his favorite pistol. "He say that to Mal? _Tāmā de_: and Mal thinks _I_ said it, don't he?"

"Zoë's had him far longer," she assured him, feeling the approach of a moving gulf at the edge of her awareness: a void that ran deeper than the vein of memory in Hamilton, but quiescent, trapped behind opaque barriers built fast by duty and love. Connected by deep channels to the other damaged body, currently under repair in Simon's careful hands. "She'll put him right again."

Whatever slept wrapped up in Zoë's skin, River had never tried to pry; she had enough nightmares already. But she felt the numinous ripples of its presence now as Zoë came down the stairs from the spare shuttle, carrying a double handspan's length of sharpened wood in one hand and a heavy wrench out of Kaylee's toolkit in the other. Zoë eyed them both, then met Jayne's gaze and jerked her chin in River's direction, her order clear enough that even Jayne didn't need words to understand it; but River shook her head at the gesture.

She wouldn't be dismissed. Not after Miranda, not now that everyone knew what she was. River slid off the crate, padding across the floor to lay a hand on the stake, and met the first mate's gaze with solemn intensity.

Zoë's eyes widened; then she shook her head, clasping River's hand in her free one as she removed it from the stake. "Not this time, _mèimei_. There's a history here I hope to God you never have to understand."

River understood enough: _here be monsters_, writ in curlicued script across the shadowed spaces of Zoë's soul. But sometimes, even monsters could evolve. That fact gave her hope.

She dropped her hand, but not her gaze. "I'm not a child," she said.

Zoë stared at her a moment longer- then jerked her chin at Jayne again, and a firm hand grasped River's shoulder. "Stay back," she told River, then approached the sprawled form as Hamilton made one last effort to move, arms scrabbling against the deckplates to flip himself back over.

She let him finish the movement, glaring up at her; then she knelt over his chest, sliding the stake over his ribs until she found the right gap. He spat something in a language River didn't know, words burning his mouth like flames- and then-

River trembled, caught off guard by the transition: it was everything and nothing like the crowded, silent streets of Miranda, or the lament rising with the smoke on Haven. The scent of brimstone teased at her nose, followed by a metallic sound like a cell door swinging shut. And then there was only Jayne beside her- and Zoë standing up again, a terrible hollowness in her eyes.

"That ought to keep them from sending him back awhile, so long as no one takes it out again," the woman said, mouth drawn in a grim line.

The intruder wasn't Hamilton anymore: wasn't anyone. Was only the soulless, empty husk of Jayne, wrong as the ship without her Captain, as River without her brother, as Zoë without Wash-

The world slipped a third time: this time overlaying rot and maggots on Zoë's cheeks, and River looked away, grasping blindly for Jayne's arm. "Curtain stuck halfway down," she gasped, blinking away the imaginary pinch of ballet shoes. "The time has come for her to leave the stage."

"_Ō, zhè zhēn shì ge kuàilè de jìnzhǎn,_ Jayne murmured warily, but pulled her away from the corpse with no further grumbling.

River would reassure Zoë later, when the maggots were gone and her words came back. Another knot was unraveling, deep in her mind where _they_ had set it; she was sorting herself out, one painful mystery at a time. She might not be quite right yet, but she was getting there; she might even be ready when the man named for a weapon finally arrived.

Fitting progress, she thought, for the girl who was sometimes a ship. _Lampyridae_ pupated just like butterflies, after all.

River laid her head on Jayne's shoulder, and let him guide her up the stairs.

-x-

_kuángzhě de_ - crazy  
_fùqīn_ - father  
_mŭqīn_ - mother  
_Tāmā de_ - Dammit  
_mèimei_ - little sister  
_Ō, zhè zhēn shì ge kuàilè de jìnzhǎn,_ - Oh, this is a happy development

-x-


End file.
